Cognitive Insights with RealEye – the Role of Attentional Mechanisms in Working Memory Efficiency Across Adulthood

As the global population ages, understanding the factors that influence cognitive health becomes crucial. A study by Elissa López-González et al., Predicting Working Memory Efficiency Across Adulthood: The Role of Enhancement and Suppression Attentional Mechanisms, Moderated by Age and Other Factors, (2024) sheds light on this issue. The research explores how attention-related mechanisms like enhancement and suppression impact working memory efficiency (WME) across different ages.

The Role of Attention in Working Memory

Working memory (WM) is a fundamental cognitive function that enables us to hold and manipulate information for short periods. This capability, however, declines with age. Two key mechanisms affect WM:

• Enhancement Mechanism: Prioritizing relevant stimuli by increasing neural activity.
• Suppression Mechanism: Actively inhibiting irrelevant stimuli to avoid distractions.

This study explored how these mechanisms change across adulthood and whether factors like cognitive reserve, sleep, and emotional health moderate their impact on WME.

How RealEye Was Used in the Study

Traditional methods of studying attentional mechanisms and eye movements often require participants to be physically present in a research lab, where specialized eye-tracking devices record their gaze. This study, however, used RealEye, a platform that tracks gaze using participants' webcams, allowing for remote, large-scale participation. Participants completed tasks online that involved viewing images of faces and scenes. They were instructed to either passively view both images, focus on the face while ignoring the scene, or focus on the scene while ignoring the face. While they performed these tasks, RealEye tracked their eye movements to measure attentional focus and distraction.

• Areas of Interest (AOIs): specific regions where the participant's gaze was measured. In this case, faces and scenes were the key AOIs.
• Gaze Duration: RealEye recorded how long participants looked at each AOI during each condition.
• Tracking Validation: To ensure data quality, the study only included participants whose gaze-tracking performance met "good," "very good," or "excellent" accuracy ratings.

Key Findings of the Study

The study produced several important insights into how attentional mechanisms and working memory efficiency (WME) change with age:

1. Attentional Mechanisms Remain Relatively Stable Across Adulthood

One of the most striking findings was that the enhancement and suppression mechanisms of attention did not show significant declines with age. While prior research suggested that attentional suppression might weaken in older adults, the study found that both mechanisms remained stable from early adulthood (age 20) to late adulthood (age 85). This stability may be attributed to lifelong cognitive experience or compensatory mechanisms developed by older adults.

2. Age Predicts a Decline in Working Memory Efficiency (WME)

Although attentional mechanisms remained stable, participants' working memory efficiency (WME) did decline with age. The researchers used an Inverse Efficiency Index (IEI) to measure WME, which takes into account both the speed and accuracy of responses. The results showed that older participants had higher IEI scores, indicating slower and less accurate responses, consistent with well-documented cognitive aging trends.

3. Cognitive Reserve and Sleep Play a Protective Role

Certain factors appeared to protect against age-related declines in cognitive performance:

• Cognitive Reserve: People with higher cognitive reserve (built through education, problem-solving, and mental activity) were better at suppressing irrelevant information.
• Sleep: Participants who reported sleeping 8 hours before the experimental session had better WME. Furthermore, for this group, the enhancement mechanism was a significant predictor of better WME, which was not the case for participants who had less sleep.

4. Anxiety and Depression Influence Attention and Memory

Interestingly, participants with higher levels of anxiety performed better in certain tasks that required them to ignore faces and focus on scenes. The authors speculated that anxiety might increase alertness, which could improve attentional focus. Similarly, higher depression levels predicted better WME in tasks involving faces, possibly because people with depressive traits may be more attuned to faces or social cues.

Conclusion

Using the RealEye platform, researchers were able to analyze how attention and working memory change across adulthood. By collecting gaze-tracking data from 194 participants, they discovered that attentional mechanisms remain stable across age, even as working memory declines. Factors like sleep, cognitive reserve, and emotional well-being influence cognitive efficiency, showing that lifestyle choices can help protect against cognitive aging.

This study is a prime example of how remote eye-tracking technology can transform cognitive research. By making large-scale participation possible, tools like RealEye enable researchers to capture rich, detailed data on attention and memory from diverse populations—without requiring them to leave their homes.

You can run a similar study!

Follow the steps below to start your own experiment with RealEye:

Account Creation and License Activation

1. Go to RealEye Dashboard and create or log in to your account.
2. Purchase the License of your choice (https://www.realeye.io/pricing). If you need any custom adjustments, contact us at contact@realeye.io. We are happy to help!
3. Activate your license by following the instructions in the RealEye License Activation Guide

Ready to set up your own study? Visit RealEye Support page to learn more and keep us posted on your results! 🚀